Creageivity 38 - with Actor / Poet / Food entrepreneur Maya Waterman

With memories going back to hiding under a table during World War Two air raids, actor, poet and food entrepreneur Maya Waterman recalls vivid moments in her life. Her path from a blitzed London was eventually to take her to the English town of Tunbridge Wells (at the casual suggestion of a friend) where she started a very successful baking business. Baking and feeding people remained a theme throughout her career, and when she moved to Los Angeles, she started several successful businesses, including food deliveries to the Hollywood creative industry. 

It was here that Maya began to have her childhood dreams of an acting career encouraged when she was invited to take classes, in exchange for managing the affairs of a theatre company. She was then spotted - at a relatively late age - by two Producers looking for a lead character actor for a TV series, with her film and TV career only taking off in her 60s. At the same time Maya was becoming an in-demand face in commercials and music videos, including for Thirty Seconds to Mars and Sam Fender songs. She also took the lead in Joyride, an Amazon commercial which she says is now recognised as ‘a classic’.

As a poet Maya had an intense and highly creative period of writing, and in Creageivity 38 she reads three of her pieces for us.
Acting opportunities continue, and Maya has also been very active in social justice and support projects - a truly rounded artist with fascinating stories to tell!

Maya’s website: https://mayawaterman.wixsite.com/maya-waterman-1

The Amazon Ad: https://share.google/AaWjaJSX3QqAkRDSq

Music used via Pixabay with thanks:La Nuit from Playhouse Sound
Portrait photo of Maya by Travis Tanner 

If you feel you're too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, then Creageivity is the podcast for you!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

This is the Creativity Podcast, episode 38.

SPEAKER_03 0:48

Hello, and welcome to this latest edition of Creativity. If you feel you're too old to be creative or you're too creative to be old, this is the podcast for you, Creativity. My name is Adrienne Thomas, and I live on the south coast of England in a wonderful place called Brighton. And with me this evening is Hi, my name's Harlan.

SPEAKER_04 1:14

I'm in Hungary, somewhere near Budapest. And what number is this? Number 38 or 37. Yes, number 38 of Creativity. Yeah. And we've been all around the world really. We've done a lot of programmes from Canada, Portugal, France, Scotland, America, England, Czechia, Ireland, Hungary. That's quite a list, isn't it? Pretty impressive. Yeah, and now we're going to go to a place which I was once told is not actually in America. It's a separate country. Los Angeles, LA. We'll find out what our guest has to say about that. So a huge welcome to Maya Waterman. Hello there.

SPEAKER_03 1:58

Hello there. Hello, Maya. Lovely to see you and hear you.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Lovely to see you and hear you. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

So we're here to talk about your life and your work and your art and your creativity. I knew that your beginnings were difficult because you were adopted, but then I read recently that you have traced your ancestry and discovered this colourful and intriguing background.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Yeah, I remember many years ago thinking about tracing my lineage, and then I let it go and forgot about it. And then somebody on Facebook suddenly contacted me and said, I think I'm your cousin. Wow. It turned out she was my mother's sister's daughter in Washington, and apparently her adopted parents had emigrated to America. Yeah, so I discovered my mother was a showgirl in London on the Edgware Road in 19 whenever it was. That's amazing. Yeah, my Julian therapist at the time said uh there were stage door johnies that used to go to the theatres because they weren't allowed to date. And they used to wait for the showgirls to come out.

SPEAKER_04 3:13

What's a showgirl?

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Uh like a gayety girl.

SPEAKER_04 3:16

What's a gay girl?

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Gaiety girls, they sometimes it's still um, what do you say, tableaus or whatever, probably slightly suggestive, I would imagine. And or dancing. Yeah, the gayety theatres. I used to fantasize about being the daughter of an aristocrat.

SPEAKER_03 3:36

I suppose it's a form of aristocracy, because that form of gaiety and and No, I mean she wasn't an ar uh she wasn't an aristocrat.

SPEAKER_04 3:44

It was your father.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

The stage or Johnny.

SPEAKER_03 3:47

Can you feel that influence in you? Yeah, I'm very good with rhythm.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Yes, I was doing a music, I was doing a music video once, and uh this very famous music director came up to me and we had to dance. He said, I think you have better rhythm than younger people, he said.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

So fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

I do feel the rhythm in me, but yeah, I don't know if that's doing my mother because I have no clue.

SPEAKER_03 4:16

So you can shake your shimmy. Okay, so looking at the rich tapestry of your life and all the threads woven into it, we have an entrepreneur, an art student, and a teacher, a graphic designer, a poet, an actress. It goes on and on. Should we go back to your early entrepreneurial life?

SPEAKER_02 4:38

In I believe it was Tunbridge Wells. I've done so many things. I was looking, it was so confusing looking at all these things. I think, oh Maya, why haven't you done one thing? I would love to have just done one thing, but seems like I've jumped into everything. Anyway, moving to Tunbridge Wells was a bit of a serendipitous event. A good friend in London said, I feel you and your children should move to Tunbridge Wells. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. So I got on a train to Tunbridge Wells one day, went into an estate agent, and he looked in his list and he said, Oh, there's one here. And he said, Oh, but I'm sorry, it's being rented. And so I thought, oh, okay. So I went home and then two weeks later he he calls me and says, Oh, by the way, it's available. So I moved to Tombridge Wells to this shop property. So I don't know how I decided to do this, but I um always loved cooking. And I don't know, one day I must have suddenly thought, well, I'm gonna turn the basement into a bakery. So then I um pulled down a wall, bought all the stuff from junkyards, and then as it grew, various shops in the town they wanted the quiche and they wanted the pizzas and they wanted the energy bars. So basically it was like schlepping stuff from Marks and Spencer's and where you buy wholesale tomato sauce and all the rest of it. And I designed the labels for the energy bars.

SPEAKER_03 6:15

How do we get from there to LA?

SPEAKER_02 6:19

Yeah, I met m my next husband in Canada, and then he came over to Cumbridge Wells and we got married. I had two more children, then I stopped baking. I don't know why. It seems my heart and my practical side get very mixed up. Um, but then we moved to um LA and eventually we got divorced, and then being alone in the house with two kids and no money, I decided to start baking again. And we started making food and delivering them to the studios. All these guys in dark rooms in the studios doing video editing and everything, got the energy bars and they got salads and quiche and everything. And um it seems out of that offering the energy bars were very popular. We stopped taking food to the studios and I took off doing the energy bars. So then I turned to making uh gift baskets with the packaged energy bars and English China, and that went really well.

SPEAKER_04 7:30

To what extent would you say that you were using your creativity throughout this whole period? I mean, is cooking creative, in other words?

SPEAKER_02 7:39

Oh yeah, it's very creative. In those days, yeah, I was constantly uh designing things. Right. I still am to a certain degree, you know. I still have all these ideas, and yeah, so it's like an ongoing thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:54

How much of a stranger in a strange land were you at this point? I mean, somehow you've jumped from Tunbridge Wells, which is a funny little town in the south of England. Now you're in LA.

SPEAKER_02 8:05

It was terrifying. It was absolutely terrifying. I I remember driving on the freeway thinking, where am I? Why am I in this crazy place? And then now I'm a beast on the freeway. I don't know why. In England I thought I don't think they have anything in America. I mean, I used to think, well, how am I going to clothe the children? I brought out much of the stuff from England, furniture and stuff, and um now there's like, okay, America has more than everything. So yeah. So then in England I was always designing um posters for Ronnie Scott's jazz club. They hired me to design all their posters, which I did for Bill Evans and Jerry Mulligan and then Webster. And so they went on the underground, all these posters. So that was quite fun to see all that. Yeah. Yeah, it was fun. And then I always wanted to be an actress, but and I remember in the wartime sitting under a table, big oak table, and my kittens dressed up in my mum's finery, imagining I was a famous actress. And wow, the bombs are dropping.

SPEAKER_04 9:21

Wow. Actually, you're a poet as well. You've got a war poem, I think.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Not to eat that for us? That would be great. I have never been thrown out of my home or ordered to leave now or else. Never caressed my child's body pulled from the rubble. Never had a gun pressed against my temple. Never witnessed my family slaughtered or blown apart. Never seen my neighborhood in ruins. Never begged for food, money, or mercy. Never been oppressed or persecuted for my gender, race, or belief. Have watched giant silver birds flying over my backyard blanket tank. With Flopsy the rabbit and Timmy the cat. Have slept awake under a heavy oak table when the sirens went off. Heard the whirring silence and then the have ingested sudden loud noises, a jump. The saying goes, out of your skin. I still have my skin and legs. Have run to the corner store clutching ration books and sweets. Have seen London fires far, far away, lighting up the night sky. And at five years old, street bonfires, fireworks on a day called Victory Day. The world in my eyes is a perfectly round fruit with so many seeds, each capable of new life, purpose, pure intentions. A pomegranate in pain.

SPEAKER_04 11:24

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 11:25

It was very moving, Maya.

SPEAKER_04 11:27

I'm fortunate to have a visual of the poem you've just read, which I think you were posting some poems on Instagram, is that right? It's very designed.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

What do you mean? Design?

SPEAKER_04 11:38

You use different typographies and different colours and shapes.

SPEAKER_02 11:43

So I love typography. I love typefaces, and that's what I do. I'm not very good at the rest of it, but I like doing that, putting them up like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:53

Yeah. Would you ever think of producing a book of your poems? Illustrated book.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

So I'd somehow feel if everybody's not reading books nowadays.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

Oh, I don't know about that.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

I did think of doing a a small chap book. I did think of that, you know. I could donate it because when I started acting, I ran a non-profit organization helping youth at risk and people in recovery. So we definitely would like to do that and just donate it to various organizations. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:26

On my copy of the poem, it says at the bottom of the poem, dedicated to peace for Ukraine. So it's relatively recent, I guess. Recent as in the last four years, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Yeah, and I think it's applicable to what's going on, I guess. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 12:41

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

So it was like a week when I woke up in the middle of the night and writing, and then all these poems came out, you know. So then that started me off on a writing thing.

SPEAKER_03 12:54

Yeah. You were talking about your acting, and you've got a very impressive resume. But it began with Jean Buer.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

Jean Buer and Tony Buhr. They changed my whole life. And it was so there again, another serendipitous event where I was driving past this theater and seeing actors with their scripts, learning their words. And I thought, oh, yeah, this is what I really want to do. And uh I can't afford it because I knew it was expensive, so I liked driving on doing my day. And then I was working at a sandwich shop, and one day this lady comes in with dark glasses and a baseball hat and really pretty woman, and she said, Would you like to work my box office at my theatre? And I said, Oh, yes, I'd love to. And um, it turns out it was exactly the same theatre that I used to drive by. So then I went, did the box office, met a lot of wonderful people. They offered me acting lessons, which I got gratis for 12 years, and I was taking over their nonprofit foundation because I really wanted to help people, and ended up teaching myself to write grants proposals. That was interesting, but very successful. It worked, and I brought them in quite a bit of money. But the whole experience of being there, meeting all these wonderful people, definitely changed my life for the better. I'm so grateful.

SPEAKER_03 14:24

Tell us a little bit about Jean's work, because I had the privilege of witnessing him once work with this very young boy, and what he did in five minutes was astounding. He produced, you know, Al Pacino out of this young boy who was just mumbling and looking down. Because he had a very specific way of working, didn't he? Can you elaborate on that?

SPEAKER_02 14:47

I can elaborate from my point of view, which was when I was up there, he'd like yell at me in a nice way and tell me to relax my jaw. You know, he'd notice things about trauma that you had in your body, anything that was um informing the way you were, the way you were speaking the script. He would like get it, he'd like zoom in and um dissect it and in a nice way, actually. I think Tony was more, she was very spiritual and she kind of like pray before we kind of even did a class. She'd like close her eyes and pray, and then she'd say something like, This is a day I will break out of my skin and touch the clouds, for example. She'd say, Drop that in and go with the words. So every time we had a class, it was something like that. You drop it in, you wouldn't think in your head about the script or anything, and you'd move forward with that. And it worked like a dream, I swear. You know, you weren't thinking, thinking, what do I do? Who should I be? How do I do this? No, no, it was like perfect.

SPEAKER_03 16:07

The session that I saw and was a part of it was Gene that was working with us, and he just made you count to 10. You couldn't look at the script at all. Yeah, and at that too. Yeah. Until by the time you're at 10, you were absolutely at full pelt energy, and then you had to run on and just do this thing. Yeah, you didn't have time to think.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve.

SPEAKER_04 16:33

So take us from incredibly exciting, energizing classes to the fact that you then become an actor and a voiceover. We know that you were dancing in a commercial uh with great sense of rhythm. How did always wanting to be an actor turn into actually being an actor? What happened?

SPEAKER_02 16:52

I think I found an agent eventually, and then I booked three commercials in the first year, and that was pretty cool. And then one day I actually was working part-time at a high-end uh fancy goods store, and I came into work, and there was a letter waiting for me from these two guys that were customers, and they said, Um, would you like to meet? We think you'd be great for the part in our project with the Made for TV series, first of its kind at the time. And I ended up being the matriarch of this series. And apparently they were in the car park saying, Oh, I think we found our matriarch the day before. So, yeah, that was interesting. And so I had lots of fun doing that.

SPEAKER_04 17:44

Did you play American or or British?

SPEAKER_02 17:46

I was British, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:48

Do you do American?

SPEAKER_02 17:49

I don't do American very well. Very well, no. Not very well. In fact, somebody wanted me to ask me yesterday because uh they thought I'd be good in their movie. And then they said, Can you do American? I said, Well, not very well, but I would try, of course. And I did Dracula's guest this uh movie. Um, I went in for the role of an English nanny, but they hired me to do a French shanty woman. So I had to learn to do a French accent. And then another one was um oh yes, Scottish. Yeah, it was um I did it with uh Brian Cox and uh Peter Madden. I was the grandmother of one of the main characters, but I was Scottish, so I had to learn Scottish.

SPEAKER_04 18:35

Has your acting career been primarily in your later years?

SPEAKER_02 18:39

Very much so. I mean, I started acting when I was 62. Now I'm 86, so go figure.

SPEAKER_04 18:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

In between, when I was 60 something, I kind of adopted my granddaughter, who was like three at the time, and I brought her up. And so um she's now 23, so she left my home when she was 18 and um lives with now living with her dad, my son. And um, yeah, that was uh she went through high school and went backwards and forwards to her mother, but spent many years with me. And then I've been working with homeless people as well, because uh I think part of me has got this really need to be part of giving and non-profit, and then the other bits, the creative bit, so I guess the instinct of many people who prepare food is that thing of feeding people, of giving to others, of nourishing others. Probably, yes. I never used to think much about money at the time. I must say, when I was baking, and um even when acting really. And I'm terrible at math, so even baking, I don't know how I even did it, but it it worked. And then math isn't necessary in acting, just memory. How do you manage that? Oh, I love not I love not speaking.

SPEAKER_04 20:03

I've just decided I can only be a background artist now because you know, even remembering hello, my name is gets a bit complex for me to remember. So can you manage a script?

SPEAKER_02 20:14

Yeah, I've just got a script yesterday, um, three pages, nice character, sci-fi movie. Yeah, I think I can manage that because I think if you relate to the character and what the character's getting through, it's much easier. But the Amazon commercial I did, there was no speech at all whatsoever, and it went it was global, and it's just been this huge success. Tell us more. Yes, yum yum. But what I'm dreaming of is getting an ad. In 2023, I went to an audition in LA, and I said, chatting to a couple of ladies, chatting away, you know, as you do when you're waiting. Then you get called in, and I was with two guys, and I did my thing. And then they call me in again, but this time with two ladies, the two ladies I was chatting to.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

And apparently the director had been looking, and he suddenly said, These are the ones, and picked us three to be the stars of this gigantic Amazon commercial. We had that magic interaction he liked.

SPEAKER_03 21:18

It was a lovely ad. I watched it over and over.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

It was quite magical. Was it like that to actually do it? It was amazing. The whole experience was quite magical. And we went to Mammoth for a whole week. I got picked up in the limo.

SPEAKER_04 21:33

Mammoth's a place.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

Oh, mammoth is this amazing 10,000 feet mountain area where the skiing and the slopes and okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:44

What were you doing?

SPEAKER_02 21:45

Three of us were on sleds going down the mountain. So it went global and apparently it's become a classic.

SPEAKER_04 21:53

What's it called? Because our listeners will want to check this out.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

It's called Joyride. Joyride on YouTube.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

Right. So for people listening, approaching possibly their sixties, you might, in your conversation and telling of your story, have opened up a whole new world to them that's accessible for people as they age. They do need us, don't they, in film and television and ads. Oh, absolutely. So, you know, a word of encouragement to all them and thank you for being so inspirational in that regard, Maya.

SPEAKER_04 22:27

I mentioned I was told once that LA is not America, it's a different country. And that was certainly my experience, actually, of being in LA. So do you feel at home there now? I mean, you've been there for a very long time.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

Well, I guess it is really, because my kids and grandkids are here. Um but I feel um lately I've been feeling a bit, I don't know. I think when you get to be older, you kind of like wonder about where you're going next. But I guess I'll stay where I am and just got to pick it up and get going again, you know, because I've been a bit down about the world situation because of my OCD and everything. I was always unsure of myself. And I even presented myself in a London hospital when I was 18 because I thought something was wrong with me. But then I looked back when I was my parents were alive and they had speech therapy for me, physical therapy. I thought, why they didn't do that in the 40s, you know, in early 40s. And I've always felt really separate from people. But now, because of the acting, that's brought me into a place of much, much, much better. So now I don't feel that isolation and um uh I don't know the words to express it really. And anyway.

SPEAKER_04 23:47

Essentially, you're American now, yeah?

SPEAKER_02 23:50

I am American, yes. I'm English. I have dual citizenship.

SPEAKER_04 23:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

Yeah. So back to acting, it was always fun being on different sets, and you learn so much. See, you start off one and you gain experience, and then by the time you got to like 21 or whatever, you're you've got this a lot more under your belt to know what to ask for, where to be, how to respond, follow directions, ask questions, the director, you know, you get so much more information.

SPEAKER_03 24:26

If people only knew exactly what goes into even a moderate or a modest rather film, when that walking onto a film set, and there are like hundreds of people and machines and huge things everywhere, it's quite stunning. And the the amount of money that's thrown around.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

The commercial was huge, and the music videos. I've done like six music videos, they were quite big.

SPEAKER_04 24:54

Come on, do a bit of name-dropping. Who are your music videoing? Come on.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

Um Imagine Dragons.

SPEAKER_04 25:00

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

I played Dan's um mother, 32nd to Mars. Um crazy woman. Colby Kaye, um Dolly Rotts, that was a smaller group, but great. Um oh um Sam Fender. Sam Fender, he's a god. He's amazing, he's so amazing. I remember in the bar where we were thinking he was like sitting in front of me looking. I don't know what was going on, but we we weren't even shooting. Right. And we were like having this intense eye contact. It was like it was so like I don't know what was going on.

SPEAKER_04 25:38

Which of his videos is that that you're in?

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Play God.

SPEAKER_04 25:42

Oh, I said he's a god, and there you go, play god.

SPEAKER_02 25:44

But I mean it was a great experience.

SPEAKER_04 25:46

I'm gonna try a very contrived segue here. You're talking about Sam Fender. He's quite well known for his stories and his tales about bullying and repression as a youth. So, how about your poem The Bully?

SPEAKER_02 26:02

Oh, right, yeah, okay. Brilliant.

SPEAKER_04 26:04

Yeah. Can you take us there?

SPEAKER_02 26:06

Okay. The bully. Popularity escapes. Attraction binds to the crowd. Leave them behind. You in a bind? Bully, we know your secret. Stand out from the crowd who badmouth, belittle, delight in humiliation. Away from the crowd, you're aloner. Powers within you to be one of a kind. Where's there to go now? In a bind? Did someone take your power? Deem your light? Control, blame, shame, hurt you? Did they ignore your pleas, needs? Rewrite your story before it's too late. One true friend can't be so bad now. If you see a kid that's different, lonely, make, not break, their self-esteem. Change it up. You have permission. Differences accept. No room for hate. Look around. You'll be losing. No chantings around religion, race. Granny thinks that's way off base. Move to make amends now. Speak kind words, they will define you. No suicides in this community. Be kind, be kind. Create a different fate. Never too late. Focus on positive interaction. Bash song, bash dance, bash paint, bash word. Be mindful. Gentle. Create. Create. Create.

SPEAKER_03 27:57

Lovely. Beautiful. Thank you. Mai, have you ever thought of performing your poems?

SPEAKER_02 28:02

Yeah, but I can't remember them. You'd have a piece of paper in front of you, you'd be right. Yeah, I know. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 28:08

I'd like to go back to the bully. It seemed to me really interesting that you were empathizing or thinking kindly of this person who was the bully.

SPEAKER_02 28:19

Because I was one myself.

SPEAKER_04 28:20

Oh, okay. How so?

SPEAKER_02 28:22

Slightly when I was in school. I was so um weakened by my lack of self-esteem and all that stuff. I tended to hang out with the girls that were quite nasty, actually. And they were trying to find their way. And then I got bullied, and I sort of turned into a little bit of a bully myself.

SPEAKER_04 28:43

I may be overthinking this, but I'm really getting this Sam Fender connection and why he was looking at you. There's this kind of thing going on.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

It was really weird, I swear honestly. If you'd have seen us, you'd have think this is very strange.

SPEAKER_04 28:58

I can believe it.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

It's big blue eyes and they're like we're like this. And oh gosh. Yeah, I wanted to read one on mental own. Oh, it's a a relative, I should say. She was using drugs, and uh I wrote this. It's a short one. Can I read it?

SPEAKER_04 29:15

Yeah, of course. You were raptily waiting.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

It's called Love Me. Love Me. It's called Love Me. She was a radiant, shimmering jewel, encased in a net, broke out into hell, a rational blur, jumbled synapses in a haze of meth. Pure and sassy. Don't fret. The journey was incredible. She, expendable, soul lost, sucked in, trapped in the creation, numb, unaware. Oh the sorrow of the shimmering jewel. She was a pure white porcelain pearl, stuck in her shell, born into royalty, broke out into hell. Not some fairy story, waiting to be inhabited, heartache and broken dreams. In crevices, corners, humanity lurks, unseen, unknown, embracing dirt, gravel, amaze, trapped in her mind, struggle, sadness, broken dreams. Love me, love me, don't retouch me.

SPEAKER_04 30:30

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 30:31

Well, that was probably needs editing. I don't know. I want to edit everything. I write something and then I I want to change everything all the time. So never mind.

SPEAKER_04 30:41

Nothing is ever finished.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

And they're all rather bit depressing, aren't they? Really?

SPEAKER_04 30:45

It sounds like a rap. I can imagine the red hot chili peppers doing that. It's very there's a lot of internal rhyming.

SPEAKER_02 30:52

I've always wanted to rap. I've always wanted to rap.

SPEAKER_04 30:55

Okay, well, it's not beyond you. I can imagine that's the next thing.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

Oh, I must read you this. I know there's no time and you probably won't use it, but do you want to hear it? Go on then. Are we okay for time, Haaland? Just check in.

SPEAKER_04 31:07

Yeah, we'll need to finish soon. Maya, your headphone has flipped and it's broadcasting your That's lovely. Yeah. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 31:20

How do I know for sure this is real? Why did you fail her? Impale her with multiple drugs and many descriptions, attempting to stop her manic predictions, police, paramedics, psychiatric detentions, doctors guessing what works in her brain, each time making her more insane. No passing along of historical informations to work with on a daily basis, hoping to achieve poignant homeostasis. Follow through one hospital to another, paper trails, why not, if everything else hits a drain? Bitch or father, mother, sister, brother, just look around, see many others. Family becoming nurses, everyone else lining their purses. I hate the strife of mental illness, digging, ripping us apart. You can tell this woman's pissed. Oh my god, what have we missed? Hippola's keeping us silent. Meanwhile, they are quiet, manic or violent. God help if you challenge the status quo. They'll point a finger at you. Go, go. Up and down, merry go round and round and round. Can you hear the sound? See the writing on the wall? But it's in blood. You are appalled. Psychiatric eunuchs care. Are you trying to make me stare? Blank walls suffocating spirit. No colour here. No music or appreciation. Sanitation rules the day. Clinical ideation. Mission, Olive View, Pacific, Adventist, White Memorial. Sounds like a bloody tutorial. Evaluating an illness, many complications, misinterpretations. How can they pick up on the pieces left behind? Reinventing the wheels each time. And then effing with body and mind. Don't get me wrong. Archery of the brain hitting bullseye, sometimes on target, like a shopping spree at the market. 5150, 72 hours will discharge them at noon. The street many cases. Where are the faces? Stumbling in pebbles of innocuous concoctions. Such seductions, depict haldol, diprexa, respiradol. Science, take the stage, deliver for individual brains, hooked up to measure delicate neurotransmitters, just as thought gives me the shivers. Pathways of stimulation, genetics reveal a whole person standing before you in glory. This sounds like the end of a Cinderella story. 20 through 50, same old, same old. Who knew this would be a story to be told? Thank you. I had a vision of everybody being, when they get genetics sorted out, everybody would be balanced because it would be so individual instead of guesswork, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:25

Well, Maya, you've taken us on an amazing journey from Johnny's and the Gaiety Theatre and Ancestors and hiding under the table and so on.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

I wish I talked more about um, I don't know, acting, I guess, but uh I think you've covered off acting pretty effectively. Yes. You think so? I I really love that you um saw Gene Buer teaching that little boy. So do I.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

It it's always stay with me. Really life-changing. Yeah, I was there with you. You've you've took me there and said, come sit and watch. And then I was in it, and it was it was really something. It was very special.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

Yeah. So now so now I shall go and OCD about all the things that I left out.

SPEAKER_03 35:11

Of course you will. Of course you will. I will. But we'll just ignore you and just edit and send it. Edit, edit, edit.

SPEAKER_04 35:19

A zillion thanks for your time and your energy and your stories. Yeah. So we're gonna finish with you reading Pulse and Spark. And thank you so much.

unknown 35:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:29

Million thanks, Maya. Okay, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

Thank you, guys. Thank you. Love you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Pulse and spark. In school I was tortured by monsters and spirits. So bad to this day, I still have the fidgets. Drew blood from my hands, never the same. Let it go, move on, create a different song. It's never that bad, you have to die. Better perhaps to become a stoner. I'm kidding you all. I never turn to drugs. Friends in impossible situations, many tripping chemical complications. Don't get lost in haze of the brain, giving parents a dose of the same. Wanna hurt someone? It's only you. Violating your self-esteem? Speak up. Reach out. Hug friends, make it real, look into their eyes. Forget screens that separate, connect to thousands and thousands of online illusions. Position yourself in a stronger pace. No apparitions by definition. This is to jails, too many to mention. Did I mention the rules of detention? Cries, lies, bible wise, judges damn you, Uncle Sam you, chain you up, sing the blues. No money for rehab, throw away the key. High fives, hold up your head. Have you forgotten the comfy bed? Oh, and while we're in the subject, don't whine and moan. You can use that phone. So stay out of jail and similar situations. Granish chant, creation, creation, creation. You'll be the perfect, you, you, you. Forget the old woman, she's full of shit. Ah, but she's strong. Her bones are well worn. Weathered storms flash in desert a long time. Position to be your line of compassion. Maybe you'll make her your fashion.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

Creativity. If you think you're too old to be creative or too creative to be old, tune in to the Creativity Podcast.

SPEAKER_04 37:52

Maya and Adrienne have left the airwaves, but I've been doing a little bit of editing on the podcast. And I was intrigued by what I was saying about Maya's inherent musicality of her poetry. And I thought, oh I wonder, I just wonder. So I grabbed a few loops off my supply of loops and noises that I have on my computer, and I've just thrown them down on the timeline. See what happens when you put a small fragment of Maya's poetry to a bit of music. Here's Grandmistress Meyer and a short excerpt from Al Spark.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

Don't get lost in haze of the brain, giving parents a dose of the thing that wanna hurt someone, it's only you.